THE

BAPTIST MISSIONARY MAGAZINE.

VOL. XXVIII.

JUNE, 1848.

NO. 6.

"THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL OF THE BLESSED GOD.”—1. Tim. 1:11.

(Continued from p. 101.)

THE FACTS OF THE GOSPEL,-THEIR NATURE.

We have said the record proves itself, but there are other proofs in abundance. We cannot go into these proofs now. We might unrol the volume of prophecy, and show how every successive page presents clearer and still clearer intimations of a wonderful and beneficent Being to come upon the earth in the latter days and redeem mankind from the power of sin, deliver them from their manifold miseries, assume the dominion of the world and reign in righteousness and peace. Indeed a large portion of prophecy may be likened to a long, continuous gallery of images, each one being a still more complete representation, than the preceding, of the Lord Jesus Christ. At first we have a dim and imperfect outline, but yet a benign and heavenly expression playing over it. Then some particular features are brought into relief,-the outline becomes more distinct, and we catch a fugitive impression of a most mysterious countenance where the divine and the human, earth and heaven, are inexplicably compounded. Finally, the evangelical prophet, "rapt into future times," draws as if from the living Original, a clear, well-defined and full-length portrait of the God-man, -every lineament of which finds its counterpart in Jesus of Nazareth. But we must waive this line of reflection. We desire, however, to remark in brief, that no portion of the world's history comes to us so fully accredited as the record concerning Jesus of Nazareth. The speaker may without impropriety be allowed to say, that having for years, from the relations in which the providence of God has placed him, been called to direct special attention to the nature of historical proofs and the principles of historical criticism, he cannot conceive it possible that any record of past events could be more fully authenticated by every variety of evidence applicable to the case than the gospel history. We have no reference in this statement to the internal evidence of the truth of the doctrines of the gospel as constituting a religious system. This is another part of the subject. But we speak of it as a part of veritable history,—the narrative of real occurrences,—of palpable realities which are most conclusively substantiated by the clearest testimony of the most credible and unexceptionable witIf the gospel record be not a true record, then all the records of the past are fictions. The great body of the world's history down to the present

nesses.

age is an idle romance. Nay, more, the soundest principles of evidence, the best established modes of proof, the clearest and most satisfactory demonstrations, are baseless chimeras of the brain. There is no fact and there is no truth, the present itself is an illusion, and we are all mere phantoms. We are not afraid of taking too strong ground here, or of any extravagance of assertion. But the gospel is true, the facts it details are reul as our own existence, as God's existence. And they are realities of most stupendous import. If these facts are admitted as they stand out in the simple, unadorned narrative of the sacred writers, they involve a meaning whose height and depth and breadth, the most illimitable imagination can neither reach nor comprehend. They are but the symbols of a higher order of facts belonging to a history whose details are far beyond the sphere of the mere human historian,-even the history of eternal redemption. The birth of Jesus can be nothing other than the incarnation of the Deity, an incarnation according to the heathenish notion of a divinity taking up his abode for a time in some man, and after a while passing into some other; but that of the second person in the Eternal Godhead descending from the blazing throne of the universe to this little revolted province of his illimitable dominions, and not only "wrapping himself in our inferior clay," but taking our whole nature (sin excepted) into intimate union with his own, and so indissolubly blending the two as to constitute one indivisible person,-the Lord Jesus Christ!

And why this infinite condescension? Remember the song of the angels at the consummation of the event,-"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men." They understood it. It was to unite two ends, the dearest to the heart of God, which else had remained forever separate and incompatible,-His own glory and the eternal well-being of man. These ends had been dissevered by human transgression, and God's glory required war on earth and wrath to man. But infinite love prompted and infinite wisdom devised an expedient by which the highest glory of God and the greatest happiness of man might be again harmonized and run parallel through eternal ages. The fullness of time had come when that expedient was to be perfected and applied. The Son of God was the agent appointed to carry out and consummate the divine purpose of mercy. The incarnation was a necessary preliminary to the great transaction which was to avail to reconcile God to man, and to throw open the doors of eternal mercy to the vilest transgressors. He must needs unite His deity with humanity that he might be capacitated for the work of human redemption; a work which could only be wrought out by a propitiatory sacrifice of infinite value. Christ was born of a woman, i. e., became a man under the law, that he might suffer death for the redemption of those under the law and sealed over to eternal wrath. The degradation of his incarnation, with all the deep humiliation involved in it, was but a preparatory step to the amazing scenes of the garden and the cross. He came from heaven to earth on purpose to suffer and to die. He had the cross in view when he rose up to leave his throne in heaven in cheerful obedience to his Father's will, and to travel the infinite distance from that spotless throne to this apostate world. When he took from his brow the diadem of the universe, he knew well he must wear the crowu of thorns ere he could resume it. When he hushed the anthems of praise from adoring hierarchies, he knew that ere they could again salute his ear he must endure the scoffs and "contradictions of sinners." When he laid aside the robes of royalty, he knew the nature and the body with which he should be clothed would be subjected to the greatest extremes of indignity and pain.

Any one who shall attentively trace the life of Jesus may easily discover, that from the beginning that blessed Being had before his mind some dreadful and overwhelming affliction which he must inevitably suffer; and as the crisis approaches, his whole soul becomes more absorbed in view of it and seemingly impatient for the hour. "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished." The death of Jesus of Nazareth, then, was really the great expiation made to eternal justice for the sins of men by the second person in the adorable Trinity taking man's place and receiving upon himself the full discharge of divine wrath, which else must have been poured out without mixture and without remission upon the transgressor's head. This amazing fact gives a meaning to all the rest in the history. Here is the heart of the gospel. It is the propitiation of the Son of God for the sins of the world, by which he has become the “Author of eternal salvation to all them who believe." Having accomplished this, his subsequent triumph and lory was sure, and also the triumph and glory of all who trust in Him. The sufferings and death of Christ, as the great propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of men, is, without question, the characteristic fact of the gospel. Without this, there is no gospel. There are no glad tidings for condemned and dying sinners. The doctrine of propitiation may be clearly recognized upon almost every page of divine revelation. And the New Testament is redolent with its heavenly fragrance from one end to the other. It is this doctrine, under the phrase of Christ crucified, in the exhibition and elucidation of which the Apostle lavished the energies of as mighty an intellect as God ever kindled up in a human organization. And while unfolding its wondrous nature and its glorious consequences to inan, his soul seems at times to take fire, and he pauses in the magnificent march of his argument to give vent to the irrepressible emotions struggling in his bosom. Strike this doctrine out of the "glorious gospel," and you would accomplish a far more fearful catastrophe than if you should blot out the sun and heap the darkling planets together into one wild, chaotic mass. If I cannot look to my Savior and believingly say,—

then I must sink in despair; my hope must go down in eternal night. It is past comprehension how men can believe the bible to be a revelation from God and yet repudiate the doctrine of a vicarious atonement through the propitiatory sacrifice of a suffering Christ. The speaker has more than once thanked God, though he trusts not in the spirit of a Pharisee, that He had not given him a mental structure which could endure so grievous a contradiction. If he should reject this doctrine, he must abandon the bible and pass over into the bleak and cheerless region of blank iufidelity. In this doctrine alone I find a whole gospel, a precious gospel, a glorious gospel. I am not able to explain its philosophy, I do not understand it. I know not that I shall ever understand it; but in this respect the angels are my companions,-those holy and seraphic intelligences who, from the first announcement in heaven of the plan of salvation, have been intently studying its mysteries with ever increasing wonder without being able to fathom their depths.

But a practical experience of the efficacy of the doctrine does not depend upon an understanding of its mysterious nature. Let an individual be brought vividly to feel the dreadful truth, (and I know no truth more dreadful,) that

he is a sinner against a holy God, and that all the attributes of the divine character, and all the principles of the divine administration, and the very glory and stability of the Eternal throne itself, demand his everlasting punishment. Now whither shall he fly for a refuge? He cannot so much as lift his eyes to the throne of God. They would be blinded and blasted by the wrathful flames which issue from the burning seat of uncompromising Justice. Will he turn to the Law which he has transgressed and dishonored? It points a flaming sword, on which is inscribed, "The soul that sinneth it shall die," right at his heart. O what infatuation for the convicted sinner to look to the law, as many do. It is as if one should seek his life by madly throwing himself upon the deadly point of an implacable enemy's spear! Shall he hide himself in the grave? Alas! it is but the portal to the awful abyss beyond, whose fiery surges, as if impatient for their prey, lift themselves on high to meet him at his coming. Whithersoever he may go, he feels himself environed by the presence of one who is his enemy, and who is full mighty to inflict upon him all the vengeance which is in his heart,-even of Him who holds in his hand and wields at his will all the resources of wrath. In this intolerable condition let him look to the Cross of Christ and get a believing view of Him who suffered thereon for the sins of the world, and "whom God has thus set forth," in view of the intelligent universe, to be "a propitiation for sin through faith in his blood." What then? Why instantly all is changed! Let him now look to the throne,-the flames are no longer there, but a Father's face beaming unutterable tenderness upon him. Let him look to the law,-it has sheathed its sword. It had long before bathed it to its very hilt in the blood of the glorious sufferer, and that has satisfied it. The believing penitent need not fear its point. Shall he longer dread the fiery pit of deep damnation? It is closed forever to him. He is a child of God, an heir of heaven. A benign and gladsome presence surrounds him "where'er he roams, where'er he rests." Think you this individual cannot tell you something about the practical efficacy of propitiation ?-that he cannot say from his heart, "sweet propitiation?" and exultingly sing,

"To God I'm reconciled,
His pardoning voice I hear;
He owns me for His child,
I can no longer fear."

The work of Christ in the salvation of men has received different appellations according to the different aspects in which it may be viewed. When the sinner is contemplated as a miserable captive under the galling yoke of sin, and the Lord Jesus Christ as moved with compassion at his wretched condition, stepping forward and paying the price of his ransom and taking him kindly by the hand and bringing him into joyous and glorious liberty, it is called Redemption. When he is viewed as lost, and exposed to a dreadful hell, and Christ as reaching forth his almighty arm and rescuing him from impending ruin, it is called Salvation. And so of other views. And the penitent and grateful disciple will delight to think and speak of Jesus by the name which best corresponds to the ascendant emotion in the process of his conviction. If the bondage of sin has been keenly and oppressively felt,-if the curse of the law has seemed to rest with a mountain weight upon his spirits, he will think of Christ as his adorable Redeemer. If a sense of his utterly lost condition and exposedness to remediless ruin has peculiarly pressed upon his despairing soul, he will speak of Christ as his blessed Savior. Again, if his thought has fixed upon the dreadful fact that the wrath of God abides on him,-that he has a con